Apple Remote Desktop 3 gives you the complete tools you need to control all the Macs in your network right from your own computer. You can even save task settings as templates and apply them in the future, or use one of more than 30 included sample scripts.

Save yourself the legwork. Apple Remote Desktop gives you more than a dozen commands you can use to control your remote systems easily. You can shut down all systems simultaneously, put to sleep, wake up, or restart any or all computers  all without leaving your desk.

You also have the ability to remotely designate the startup disk for your client Macs. Set any number of Macs to start up from a NetBoot image or their local hard drives. You’ll find this to be an indispensable feature if you are in charge of a computer lab or cluster-computing environment where startup disks are often changed.

And for minimum disruption, you have the ability to schedule any of your admin tasks. All you have to do is save the settings for future deployment and Apple Remote Desktop will initiate the process at the scheduled time.

Apple Remote Desktop 3 also gives you the power to execute UNIX shell scripts or commands on your remote client systems. You can either view a summary or the complete results of the command’s output. This lets you script many standard functions built into UNIX systems or into third-party tools. You can also take advantage of the command-line interfaces included in Mac OS X.

These pre-populated UNIX commands are available via the Send UNIX Task Template:

List All Network Services

Set Manual IP

Set DHCP IP

Set BOOTP

Set Manual IP with DHCP Router

Set DNS Servers

Set Search Domains

Set Web Proxy

Allow Power Button to Sleep

Bonjour Name

Current Date

Current Time

Time Zone

Network Time

Network Time Server

Remote Apple Events

Remote Login (SSH)

Restart After Freeze

Restart After Power Failure

System Sleep Time

Display Sleep Time

Hard Disk Sleep Time

Delay After Power Failure

Wake On Modem Activity

Wake On Network Access

Quit Application

Volume On

Volume Off

List Required Software Updates

Download Required Software Updates

Repair Disk Permissions

Computer Uptime

Free Swap Space

Top Users

Lights Out Management

Apple Remote Desktop 3.1 and later allows you to remotely power on an appropriately configured Intel-based Xserve. You can also shutdown or force a restart of an Xserve that is being unresponsive.
Use the System Overview report to view information about how the Xserve’s Lights Out Management (LOM) is configured including whether the LOM is active and its networking configuration.